The present invention relates to dog food acceptability, and more particularly to an improved flavor system for surface coating on dry dog foods.
While the development and production of nutritious animal foods are quite well understood and pose few problems to the art, there is a continuing problem of making these formulations palatable. Accordingly, there is a present need to develop processes and formulations which increase the palatability of animal foods, especially pet foods, while at the same time maintaining their nutritional value. Where the offered foods are unpalatable, animals often pass them up. Traditionally, the most severe palatability and ration rejection problems have been associated with dry pet foods.
The use of palatability improving additives enables the pet food manufacturer to provide pets with rations of high palatability, yet use as raw materials high proportions of ingredients which are undesirable or even unfit for human consumption or which might be otherwise unpalatable to pets. The ability to improve the palatability of pet foods made of less desirable raw materials helps maintain the lowest possible cost for human foods by decreasing the demand for human food raw materials and increasing the economic value of the by-products of the human food industry.
Many attempts have been made to obtain increased palatability of pet foods by the addition of a variety of materials, and a number of publications suggest the use of animal fat, meat extracts or enzymatically treated fat or protein materials. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,119,691 to Ludington, Schara and Mohlie suggests coating a fat, a flavoring component and a dry gravy former onto a dry dog food. The gravy former will normally comprise a water soluble thickener and the flavor is disclosed as preferably being a liquid meat extract. The fat can, if desired, serve as a carrier for the dry gravy former or the flavoring component. In another patent, U.S. Pat. No. 3,857,968, to Haas and Lugay, there is disclosed a process for improving the palatability of the animal foods based upon an enzymatic treatment of a mixture of fat and protein. Also, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,653,908 to Buck and Smith, it is disclosed that the palatability of a soft-moist feline food can be improved by partially hydrolyzing the meat containing slurry from which it is formed to liberate flavorful amino acids.
There remains, however, a present need to develop further more effective and more economical means to improve the palatability of dry dog foods.